


Apricity

by immistermercury



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: ;), I love the ending, M/M, Missing somebody, Who am I?, and I love fluff, but you'll love the ending, it's inspired by poetry, it's not poetry, it's very introspective, looking back on a past relationship, mapping the break down of a relationship, okay wait, this is written in first person!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immistermercury/pseuds/immistermercury
Summary: My love came back to meUnder the November treeShelterless and dim.He put his hand upon my shoulder,He did not think me strange or older,Nor I, him.- Frances Cornford, All Souls' Night
Relationships: Jim Hutton/Freddie Mercury
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Apricity

**Author's Note:**

> _Apricity: the warmth of sun in winter._
> 
> Based off this delightful poem which is currently on the roof of a Piccadilly line train on the London Underground!
> 
> You can read this in whatever verse you like, and it can also be read as canon-compliant!

_ My love came back to me _

_ Under the November tree _

_ Shelterless and dim. _

_ He put his hand upon my shoulder, _

_ He did not think me strange or older, _

_ Nor I, him. _

The cold was beginning to bite through my thighs; I couldn’t count the length of time I’d spent under that tree, idly flicking the pages of a sketchbook with little conviction and even less inspiration. Nature itself numbed my skin, even through layers of denim and a feather-padded jacket, a scarf, boots, thick woolen socks that I’d received at the bottom of my stocking of my twenty-sixth Christmas, back when we were excited and besotted and far too tipsy for Christmas day.

I’d known him so long that I’d learned each of the lines on his face as they appeared, as the fresh skin of twenty became the weathered skin of thirty-five, as gentle hands grew calloused, as lips chapped and softened with the coming and going of the seasons. I’d seen that face every morning, noon, and night, I’d seen it over dinner and over drinks, above me and below me, I’d seen how it hardened with the sharp realities of life, a youthful innocence giving way to the experience of bills and resentment and heartbreak. I didn’t resent it, not as the other faces of my youth, but it saddened me sometimes; to see it mature was to remind me of my own ageing, hands not so agile as when they were younger, wit dulled by too much use, excitement given way to the mundane.

I still didn’t know where it had all gone wrong, when we’d decided that we couldn’t spend another night together, stifling one another, keeping each other from experimenting, from being true to ourselves. Meeting so young meant a lack of experience, bar nights and sex clubs tied to another person, experimenting and yet never being able to lose ourselves. He hadn’t liked the ket, the acid, and he’d resented the mornings I wasn’t ready to come down and come to bed; he wanted children and I wanted cocaine. 

We’d stayed civil, but the desire to be together, to meet up and to converse had died with the night; we could nod at one another if we stumbled into one another in the supermarket we’d shopped in together for so long -  _ memories of fridge magnets, ‘please buy milk’ and ‘no fuck you’ in purple and red and yellow and orange, still made the fridge at the lodge look bare -  _ but we never made time for one another anymore. He’d found another boy, and I’d been wounded when he was ten years younger and ten years prettier than me, and I didn’t fancy the relentless circle of questions, wondering when I’d ever find another life partner.

I kidded myself I didn’t want one. I kidded myself that I didn’t need to be held down, I was a bird or a butterfly with wings to stretch, I didn’t need the arguments that came with commitment, with somebody else trying to make life decisions for me. So much of what we’d done, I’d agreed to see that smile on his face - the fucking hideous colour of the entryway reminded me of him every time I’d walked into that house alone to retrieve my stuff so I could sell it. 

In truth, I missed him. I missed the man I’d fallen in love with at eighteen when London was so bright and new and exciting, when I’d been the tiniest fish in the biggest pond and I’d merely tried to dodge the sharks as I went along. I missed the man who knew my body as if it were his own, I missed the man who would get turned on if you kissed just under his left ear and then down his neck, I missed the man who knew my secrets, had held me when I’d had a whole bottle of whiskey and then had sat crying and vomiting through until the morning, the man who knew exactly what I wanted to eat, wanted to do, all my routines. I missed coffee in the mornings, sharing cigarettes in bed and burning holes in the sheets when we got high and silly. 

It was strange to watch something you were so certain would last forever dissolve before your eyes, and to let it as though you were powerless. 

I wasn’t unhappy; I didn’t cry in the evenings, I didn’t drink until I blacked out, I didn’t replace the attention with drugs. When everything was so easily accessible, when I could snort coke or drink vodka whenever I chose, everything became less exciting. I became more restrained than when we were together, and I found myself replicating our routines by myself - he would always put our socks on the radiator on a Sunday evening, and we’d take a long bath and then get dressed in each other’s clothes and our hot socks and we’d lay for hours in bed until we fell fast asleep, always wrapped up in one another. It was different, being alone; the socks were warm but the bed was cold and it didn’t get warmer for a long while when it was only me amongst the silk sheets. 

A little part of me still yearned for him, wanted to give him all those things I’d denied him. 

I found myself drawing him, the sight of him in our bed on the night of my first and only engagement, when he’d fallen asleep on my pillow after I’d gone to clean myself up. He’d clutched onto it in the same way as he’d once held me during the night, before we’d moved to opposite sides of the bed and eventually to different bedrooms when we’d brought new partners home for the evening. He had looked so beautiful, so peaceful, and I tried to recapture the look of elated calm on his face with only the 4H pencil that I’d brought to the park as soon as the sun had reluctantly crawled up over the horizon.

I wouldn’t often come somewhere like Hyde Park - the garden at the lodge was beautiful, the kind of garden that Jim should’ve had all those years ago, and so I didn’t often long to see nature again - but seeing only two other men every day, and two men deeply in love, was sometimes a little too painful to be surrounded by. I knew the risk of being seen, being spotted, being harassed, but I did it all the same.

Even so, when the hand lightly squeezed my shoulder, I jumped all the same.

I looked up, and I fell in love with the ways those eyes regarded me: so sensible but so warm, loving and soft and gentle. I fell in love with the way they scanned over me, checking in the same way as he had every evening to clock my mood, to work out whether I needed a hug or a glass of whiskey, whether I wanted him to hold me until I fell asleep or needed him to pin me down until I forgot about everything else in the world.

When I looked into those eyes, it occurred to me that they were seeing me as I had been, not as I was; I was not a stranger, I was not older, he didn’t see the lines that had begun to carve their way around my mouth from how much I had smiled over the years. I was not the man he’d let go, but the man he’d fallen in love with, the man with too much confidence and a mediocre predicted degree from art school.

And when I looked into those eyes, I saw the same. I saw the twenty-year-old hairdresser who had first trimmed my curls on a Wednesday evening, three days after I’d gotten my flat on Holland Road, who had stolen my heart with such voracity that I’d spent three hours worrying about how I looked before our first date. I did not think him strange or older; he awoke the sleeping beauty in my heart that longed for him to come back.

I threw my arms around his neck, murmuring the first words that came to mind, a hurried  _ I love you  _ that was almost swallowed by the sound of the wind in amongst the leaves. He took my cheek in the palm of his hand, hesitated, and then kissed me softly, a kiss that was a rush of everything I’d ever wanted, the soft touch of a man who knew endlessly and exactly where to hold that had me melting into him, smooth and easy like warm water between his fingers.

He pulled away, he smiled, and simply replied that he loved me, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! I love this poem so much and I really wanted to do a little piece based off of it and the first thing that came to mind when I read it. As always, please leave me comments - they are my favourites!


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